We are not likely to learn much more for a while about the motivations and internal communications of the small, cult-like group known as the Zizians, who have left six deaths in their wake over the past two years. But we do now know what Ziz herself said in court last week.

Jack "Ziz" LaSota and two others who are apparently loyal to her were arrested a week ago Sunday in rural Maryland and are being held without bail there, likely pending extradition back to Pennsylvania. And the Chronicle just got their hands on an audio recording from a bail hearing last week in which Ziz spoke out via remote video feed in a Allegany County, Maryland courtroom. And she suggested that her being able to eat a vegan diet was "more important than whatever this hearing is."

"I haven’t done anything wrong," LaSota said to the judge, adding, "I shouldn’t be here."

LaSota paused frequently and said "um" quite a bit, and proceeded to interrupt the judge a number of time, leading the judge to suggest she would be muted if she did not pipe down.

LaSota also said she was in a "mild state of delusion" after not being properly able to eat since entering jail. And, she added, when she was previously incarcerated in nearby Pennsylvania in 2023, she fasted — essentially went on a hunger strike — for over a month because she was not being provided vegan meals. And she said something about a jail chaplain with a "discriminatory agenda."

Per the Chronicle and the recording, the judge allowed LaSota to speak for about five minutes toward the end of the hearing, and she argued that a bail release may be a "matter of survival," because she needed access to vegan food. Her lawyer suggsted that her mother may have figured out a way to get her vegan mails at the jail.

“I think the idea that I be mentally impaired for a month at proceedings because I’m in a state of starvation or that somebody with a particular majority religion would be deciding whether my religious beliefs are real … it’s not right."

LaSota's statement suggests that she ties her plant-based diet to a religious belief, which tracks with some of her earlier writing, and with the similar, cultlike devotion with which several of her associates have spoken about veganism.

Daniel Blank, 26, who was arrested last week alongside LaSota and 32-year-old Michell Zajko, reportedly broke off contact with his parents as he insisted that they adopt a vegan lifestyle.

Maximillian Snyder, 22, who was arrested last month in Solano County, California for the murder of 82-year-old Curtis Lind, used an opportunity to speak to the Chronicle to dictate a letter to a well known figure in the rationalist movement, convincing him that he must adopt and promote veganism.

LaSota has never been charged with any violent crime, however she, Blank, and Zajko were all questioned and considered persons of interest in the December 31, 2022 murder of Zajko's parents in Chester Heights, PA. LaSota was also previously living with others in two box trucks on Curtis Lind's property in Vallejo where three of her associates allegedly attacked Lind with knives and a sword in November 2022. LaSota, who was not apparently present for the crime, appears to have been questioned by authorities at the time before fleeing the Bay Area, but was never charged.

It was several months before this that she allegedly faked her own death by drowning in the Bay, with the help of two associates, one of whom died in the melee with Lind.

Lind was killed one day after the Solano County District Attorney gave a statement saying that he was the only eye witness to his own attempted murder, and would be testifying in the upcoming trial of two other LaSota associates, Suri Dao and Somni Leathem, who remain jailed in Solano County — and who have both attempted escape, the DA said.

Two other LaSota associates, Teresa Youngblut and Ophelia Bauckholt, who appear to have had some contact with Zajko and LaSota in recent months, were implicated in the killing of a US Border Patrol agent in Vermont on January 20. Bauckholt was fatally shot in the incident, and Youngblut was shot and injured and will also be facing trial there. Authorities say the gun she used in the killing was registered to Zajko, and may be linked to a gun used to kill Zajko's parents.

Acquaintances in the rationalist movement had been sounding alarm bells about Ziz/LaSota's writings and behavior for several years, with one leader in the movement, Anna Salamon, saying she felt viscerally afraid of LaSota as far back as 2018.

Her belief system, centered on decision theory and rationalism, includes some strange ideas about the hemispheres of the brain being able to operate independently — something that is not backed up by brain science. She has tied this notion to both gender — with people having, sometimes, male and female hemispheres simultaneously, or two of the same — and morality, with people having good and evil halves. Rarely, she has written, people can be "double good," brain-wise, like her.

Related: 'Zizian' Group Member Arrested In Sonoma Protest Confirmed Alive, Estranged From Group

Photo via Sonoma County Sheriff's Office